166,000 miles. Been noticing a whine that progresses with speed, not transmission shifts, maybe a bit more so when under load. Decided to do a filter and fluid change on the transmission. Whine was still there. Daughter's daily driver and on Thanksgiving night called and said that shortly after leaving home that the truck just came to an abrubt stop while driving slow on a gravel road, then turned around to come home to get another car. Then it locked up right in front of the house. Locked up, meaning would not move in drive or reverse. Clearly some gears bound up. After fiddling with it, I did get it to move on its own. Lots of noises coming from the drive train. Transfer case is bad.

Bought a used transfer case with 107,000. The question is, to buy a gasket kit for it or not. Recommendations?

 

The inspection cover (aka bottom cover) gasket is notorious for leaking and being difficult to seal so if I had one I was installing I'd very carefully replace the gasket on the bench before installing the t-case. You may want to replace all the gaskets and seals while you have the opportunity to do so with the t-case not installed, but based on my years reading here and with my truck the inspection cover's the most common source of leaks. Others' opinions may differ.

 

I currently have a new (used) one on my bench because the previous owner of my D2 ran it out of oil. I read a lot and battled with the same question, and ultimately bought the seal/Gasket kit (Britpart RTC3890(G) Transfer Gearbox - Gasket Kit), Corteco input and output seals, and some Ultra Black RTV. The Corteco seals read to be the best oil seals you can get. I decided to not use the paper gaskets that came in the kit and used RTV. I will see if that was a good decision when I install it, hopefully early next week after my Transmission output seal arrives.

 

Whenever I've torn into a Transfer Case I've always used the Permatex "Right Stuff" vs any gaskets and they never leaked.

 

Alright....Got to thinking, I had better dig into what really caused the lock up on the Rover. I put it up in the air, pulled the transfer case drain plug, I kid you not, about 3 ounces of fluid drained! Wow! The fluid was a bit thick and very dirty, but didn't look too bad. On the magnetic plug, it looked like typical slurry but did not have any shavings. So I thought let's pull the inspection cover to see what it is telling me. Of course the cross member bolts were stuck, so I thought I should be able to get the inspection cover off without removing it. The first couple of bolts on the inspection plate did come loose but had that feeling of being difficult and possibly breaking, so I took a different opinion. Went and bought some conventional $5.50 per quart gear oil, put it in to see what it would do. The truck rolls just fine but does have what I think is incorrect gear meshing "whir or whine" that gets louder with speed. Do keep in mind, I did acquire another transfer case but thought I would try in a last ditch effort to see if I could get by with not changing the case....just yet. Anyone speak from experience of running one of these out of gear oil and had one survive...for at least a reasonable number of miles. This truck does not see the highway much. It is an around the area truck for my daughter to drive, and for when I need to pull an occasional snowmobile trailer. Thoughts? Just throwing this out there....could it be possible that the park brake is causing the noise and caused the prior "lock-up"? Maybe the noise is a bearing that has gone bad in the transfer case as a result of being starved of fluid. What really concerns me is what is going to shear if whatever happened before gets lodged again. When it happened before, my daughter was driving pretty slow....maybe 20 miles per hour. I am really just thinking out loud to get thoughts from those of you that have had experience with these transfer cases....I really don't want to change that damn thing out right now if I don't need to. If I had what I considered to be a good Rover shop near by...or at least someone that is good with four wheel drive trucks in general, I would consider having them take a look at it. I un-fortunetely do not have that. Likely the reason that I have done most of the maintenance of this truck myself.

 

If it just locked right up, then either a diff or a universal joint will be most likely to fail I think. The transfer case is pretty beefy.

 

My universal joints are good, rebuilt drive shafts a few years back complete with grease zerks. Honestly, I am still not convinced that my transfer case is bad. I need to get it to a buddies shop that has a Bendpak lift and get it up running and in gear to see where the hell the noise is coming from. This truck literally does not get driven any more than a half-hour at a time, and does not do any strenuous work when trailering. So even though the transfer case was next to empty, I am still hopeful that it is ok...or at least good for the near future. Again, I really don't want to change that damn transfer case if not absolutely needed. With all this being said, I did have the flex plate failure like 6 years ago but it was replaced with a new one. I wish I would have had the rear crank seal changed at the same time. What I really need to do is invest in a two or four post lift if I plan to maintain this an many other vehicles that I have. PITA doing this sort of work from a creeper.

 

Swapping out a TC isn't that big of a deal on a D1/D2. The biggest PITA on an un-touched D2 will be the silly rivets holding the shifter plate in. It's time consuming & I NEVER put rivets back in. I use size 14 sheet metal 1/2 screws which makes it a breeze if you ever need to gain access from the top again.

Basically from the top you disconnect all the wiring harnesses, remove the shifter linkages, remove the Ebrake drum assembly, the rear muffler, and the lower support brace. Then if you remove the rear back round cover and then take the gear set out it gives you plenty of room to drop it. I did it with the D2 I was working on still on the ground and a 65.00 transmission jack from Harbor Freight. I did the transmission at the same time, but it was very straight forward and maybe a 3hr job from start to finish with the proper tools.